Comments on Speed Kills

• Never missing a chance
• Posted by felicity on April 6, 2011 at 7:00am EDT
• I have not found that it takes a year (!) to do a faculty search. I had to read this twice trying to figure out what you trying to say. Then I just figured that Dean Dad never passes up a chance to bash faculty for any reason whatever. So now faculty are too slow when it comes to doing searches for full-time faculty positions. Sheesh. And of course, it's because they don't work hard enough, aren't on campus enough and generally just like complaining. In this case they'd rather whine about the need for full time faculty than actually hire any.
  
  In my experience, getting the search approved in the first place takes most of the time and each step along the way having the Dean or some Associate Vice President bless wherever you're at so that you can continue to the next stage of the search eats up time, too. You're right, it is hard to get people in the same place at the same time to discuss files, but that's not because people are reluctant to come to campus but because planning meetings around 5-6 people's teaching schedule is nigh on impossible sometimes.
  
  Putting together an on campus interview can take a while to arrange as the people the candidate needs to meet outside the department (deans, provosts, heads of libraries, etc.) often have impossible schedules (sometimes justifiable because of their workload, and sometimes they're just on vacation)
  
  Finally, isn't inclusivity good? Aren't we trying to find someone who will actually stay. Unlike many professions who can hire from vast local pools of other, say, lawyers or accountants or whatever, we are often asking someone to move across the country to take a job ---- don't we want the fit to be right for both us? Also, what actually is the hurry? A search launched in October is unlikely to jump through all the administrtive hoops (even if faculty were coming in every day to work on it) to yield a hire in time to start teaching for spring semester in January. Once that deadline is missed, your successful job candidate isn't needed (usually) until August anyway -- so why not take the time to be inclusive? In any event, the money to hire the new person isn't usually available until the new fiscal year (here after July 1) anyway, so even if you hired someone quickly they'd just be twiddling their thumbs until August anyhow.
  
  People in my department leap at the (infrequent) chance to do searches. We take them seriously and faculty & staff carve out time to work on them pretty much nonstop until we complete the hire. There might be lots of reasons for administrators to bash faculty, but this really isn't one of them. Try again, Dean Dad.

• urgency
• Posted by ezry on April 6, 2011 at 8:00am EDT
• I already know DD doesn't believe in an "annual emergency," of the kind that generally happens (say) to gen-ed departments trying to hire adjunct faculty in August to meet a sudden upsurge in students (or defection of faculty who got hired into someone else's slightly-better-paying emergency). I maintain, though, that one can have a plan to have an emergency: the structure of the institution preciptates the latter in a partly predictable but not avoidable way.
  
  My colleagues' and my requests for "urgent" hires similarly take into account the structural time it will take to hire faculty: to negotiate with a unit over priorities, to negotiate with an administrative unit over lines, to run a thorough search along the timeline of the discipline nationally, and to complete the hire in an inclusive fashion. Some of that could speed up if colleges & universities weren't on college/university schedules, with set start dates, set times of rising and falling workloads, and set times of on- and off-campus work. But they are, so most search committees I've been on proceed with all deliberate speed given the obstacles.
  
  We take all that into account, down here in the faculty ranks. Our "urgent" requests this spring thus mean that we can see that in Fall 2012 we will quite urgently need faculty on the ground to support the courses and students we anticipate having then -- and we know if we don't get started now, we'll miss the boat and have to wait a whole 'nother year.

• This is infuriating
• Posted by An Adjunct and her family at Community College on April 6, 2011 at 9:45am EDT
• This is an absolutely infuriating post -- and comments -- that completely ignore the obvious answer screaming at both tenured faculty and administrators in the face: when you get a full-time line, ADJUNCTS SHOULD GET THE RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL. To do anything less is no less than dishonest.
  
  Refusing to hire adjuncts for open full-time lines says to the adjuncts and to the (paying) public that your claims that you can't pay adjuncts better is a lie. It says to the (paying) public that you'll be happy to put students in classrooms with people that you wouldn't be willing to hire full-time, even as you profess in your glossy PR materials that you already have a stellar faculty (you just conveniently forget to say that 75% of them don't get a living wage).
  
  Thank you for providing us with (more) evidence that higher education is as corrupt as high finance. Practices like these are nothing less than fraud. It's time for legal action.
  
  

• First refusal?
• Posted by IHE Reader on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• I don't understand the argument that people who can't find a full-time gig in academia should get first refusal rights at the school(s) where they teach as an adjunct. Schools attempt to find the best people they can for full-time positions. Sometimes they hire duds. But if adjuncts think they are the best candidates for full-time positions, then they can throw their hats in the ring like everyone else.

• Posted by History Prof. on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• In my experience, Felicity is right: the part of the search that takes the longest is actually getting the position approved in the first place. To be fair to the excellent dean we have here, when he is not traveling in his day job as fundraiser for the liberal arts, he is swamped with requests for approval of vacated lines, new lines, repurposed lines, etc., all of which must then be approved by the provost (and I suspect much of the delay is in that office). Here is the timeframe from my department's side: applications are due in the first week of November; they are vetted and first-round interviews are scheduled shortly after Thanksgiving; finals and Christmas intervene; first-round interviews in early January at the AHA; campus visits in late January; departmental decision no later than the first week of February. Our new dean usually makes the call to the candidate within 48 hours of the department's decision (this was not the case under previous deans: when I was hired, it took the dean a month to get around to calling me!). Leadership and collegial standards enforced by the chair are the key. It is completely unacceptable to insist that one be included in meetings, but then only consent to come to campus two or three days a week. Our department has an "all hands on deck" policy about searches. Unless a teaching demo or research talk conflicts with your teaching schedule (which we naturally avoid as much as possible in setting up the interview, but it cannot always be avoided), you must be there or you forfeit your right to vote on the hire.

• the slowness of searches
• Posted by pete biesemeyer , prof of biology/science dept at north country community college on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• Two things. First, certainly adjuncts should have the right to apply, but it would be wrong to give anyone, adjuncts or otherwise, automatic first refusal. If anyone has to stand search for a position, everyone has to stand search, else the potential for inside deals is too obvious to elaborate. Second, what's the basis for the objection to reading applications before the deadline? It seems the most expeditious thing to do and I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it. It would be much the same as grading term papers that are submitted before the deadline. If you have a good rubric and apply it consistently, the scores come out the same regardless. Moreover, what is rationale for a deadline? It would seem a wiser policy to keep the search open until the position is filled. That's been the practice at my institution and it has served us well.

• Searches
• Posted by CC Dept. Chair on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• DD, 10 first-round interviews sounds staggering. Our process is almost exactly the same as yours, but we usually only do 5 first-round interviews, six if we have a really good pool. I can't imagine having time to do 10.
  
  

• I don't think so
• Posted by felicity on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• Dear Adjunct (and your family too), I have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that adjunct faculty should get "first right of refusal" in any faculty search that is done -- at least not at a 4 year institution, perhaps community colleges are different. As a former department chair, I hired adjunct faculty for many years (and I helped more than a few of them in their searches for full time jobs -- which several did get). No matter what you are looking for in hiring PT faculty, you are almost always limited to a local pool. There is no guarantee that whoever you hire to teach a "one-off" course in a particular field will, in fact, be a specialist in that field. Sometimes there are no available adjuncts in the area (not all colleges and universities are in big cities with lots of PhDs living locally), so you look for someone who is a "close enough" fit or you abandon the attempt to add the field to your offerings. If in some moment of affluence at your institution, your dept gets authorization to hire a full-time person in the field, it may in fact, be the case that the PT faculty member who has been teaching one or two courses in that area does not have the expertise or experience to develop the field that you want developed. I can give an example of someone we hired whose PhD was in British Empire but who could teach (and reasonably so) a basic 300 level survey in Middle East History -- but, when we got the authorization to hire a Middle East specialist, he was not competitive for the job and there was no way we could pretend he was. Had he been competitive, I would certainly have encouraged him to apply for the position. Would he have gotten it? I dobn't know -- that's why you have a competition and why laws require you to do a search. To be sure, he was the best PT faculty member we could find in the area at a particular point in time. He did a reasonably good job teaching a couple of courses -- but our judgment about hiring a full-time TT faculty member had (& has) to be about more than that. Will the person be a contributing member of the dept? Will s/he be an active contributor to the discipline? Can s/he develop the field and attract students? Over the years, a couple of our PT faculty have competed successfully for TT jobs when they crop up, but not all of them have. There is no automatic right to be waived into a job as a FT member and there ought not to be. When I think of the PT faculty that the Dean's office has forced me to hire in August and who wound up staying on with us, I am immeensely grateful that they have stayed on, but I also recognize that there was no search per se -- they got the job because there was no one else in the area who could even vaguely pretend to teach a particular course. By this time, I'm sure you are muttering to yourself and have decided that I'm awful because I don't agree with you and that somehow I don't appreciate your contribution and your sacrifices. I'm sorry for that, but in this case I just believe you are totally wrong and way off base.

• No rights of first refusal
• Posted by Canadian Commentator on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• While I sympathize with the challenges of adjuncts, I don't buy in to the notion of rights of first refusal for a given job. This mixes apples and oranges in a serious way.
  
  It always seemed to me strange that unions etc negotiate 'internal hires get first crack' rules. One wants to hire the best candidate for the role. Adjuncts and other types of internal candidates have a significant advantage: they know the culture, they know the committee members, they know the vibe of the institution, they have had a chance to get an 'on the job' interview for several months. The fact that they are a known commodity carries a lot of weight. In my own case, I've applied for several student service jobs in the past year and have lost out consistently to internal candidates.
  
  Also, I've rarely seen a search where the losing candidates could be deemed 'unqualified' and the winners the only 'qualified' candidates: usually it was a question of the best candidate within the criteria of the role. This will sometimes be an adjunct teaching on that campus, but sometimes its not: that's the nature of an open competition.
  
  Why would you limit your talent pool to chose from to only the adjuncts currently on contract? Wouldn't that promote adjuncts to work at 4-5 campuses to become eligible for the 'right of first refusal' at as many places as possible? Is that good for students? Would you want to limit the candidates who run for Governor to only those who have served in state legislatures?
  
  I agree that adjuncts should make a living wage. I don't pretend to know how to make that happen. That said, let's not confuse that issue with the need for open competition hiring.

• How frustrating!
• Posted by Adjunked on April 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EDT
• Gosh, what a hassle it is to hire a full-timer fairly and get an accountable, quality employee! Maybe we should just have one middle manager hire and fire a legion of fly-by-night ghost adjuncts and lose any sort of quality control, pay them peanuts, and act surprised when the students don't learn. Wait, that's the method administrators have been utilizing near exclusively, and I'd wager that Dean Dad is one of them.

• Hang On
• Posted by I don't see it that way on April 6, 2011 at 3:45pm EDT
• Unless you're employed through a collective bargaining agreement that defines your rights as an adjunct to include "right of first refusal" for a full-time opening I don't see how you have any special claim to a full-time job opening.
  
  If you were hired to teach classes as an adjunct, and you accepted the terms of that employment, why would you now think the college owes you something beyond what was originally offered? Where is the dishonesty and corruption?
  
  I inferred from DD's post that these searches are national (they always were at my CC). Well, adjuncts who have credentials, experiences, and skills that are competitive within a national pool of candidates stand a really good chance -- especially if they have shown initiative and had success as an adjunct. Then again, adjuncts who have made a point of being belligerent, entitled, and demanding may find that their track record reduces their competitive advantage significantly.

• Posted by Lilac on April 6, 2011 at 6:00pm EDT
• The solution is to make the CC hiring process more like the 4-year hiring process. CC's habitually shoot themselves in the foot with unnecessary nonsense. I've often been asked to fly across the country twice for the same job -- once to meet the hiring committee, and the second time to meet the administrators. More often than not they want me to pay for both trips and--worse yet--they give me less than a week's notice, guaranteeing that the fares will be twice as expensive. Such lack of consideration ensures that only the most desperate out-of-town candidates remain in your pool. The good candidates will read those signs and run the other directions.
  
  There is no need to have a pool of more than four people. Three is enough. Candidates deserve to have a casual dinner with some members of the faculty, so they can get a sense of the department's social environment in an informal setting. Meetings with administrators should be scheduled for the same trip as the departmental interview. Teaching demonstrations should be in real classes with real students -- not in conference rooms.
  
  This is how 4-year schools do it. CC's should take a lesson from them. Flying a person across the country only to read scripted questions at them for 25 minutes is an absurd and wasteful exercise.
  

• Posted by midprof on April 7, 2011 at 12:15am EDT
• Requiring all six members of the committee to be present for each first-stage interview is a scheduling nightmare. I'm at a much smaller institution and we routine record things for this or that person away at a conference, etc.
  
  I also wonder what the administrative support is in this picture -- who's doing the scheduling?
  
  Though sometimes tedious and overlong, the relatively slow unfolding of a search is occasionally helpful. No matter how well established the position, new considerations sometimes emerge in discussing candidates.

• Here's what you're all missing
• Posted by Adjunct and her family on April 7, 2011 at 2:15am EDT
• What we have here is a failure to communicate...
  
  (First, my assumption is that the open full-time line is to teach courses that the adjunct is already teaching. I'm not suggesting that an adjunct should get right of first refusal for a position teaching courses he or she has never taught before, though the adjuncts who are there, being exploited, sure deserve the courtesy of being seriously considered.)
  
  But of course from your perspectives it makes no sense to give adjuncts the right of first refusal for a fulltime position doing what they are already doing. You don't look at it from the perspective of the students and the public, much less the adjuncts.
  
  From the moment he or she is hired, with or without an interview, the school warrants to the public that the adjunct is qualified to teach. Even if you claim that the adjunct is being hired on some kind of probation (and do you tell the students that, by the way? Don't students, like patients, deserve to know the status of the people treating or teaching them? I'd sure want to know if an intern was operating on me rather than a surgeon -- and without supervision, too), by keeping that adjunct on past one semester, the school further warrants to the public that the adjunct has passed a much longer, much harder, more reality-based interview process than the phony "teaching demonstrations" that "real" job candidates are asked to give.
  
  If you refuse to hire adjuncts for open full-time positions teaching courses they are already teaching (and if you persist in hiring them semester after semester without ever giving them even a shot at full-time), then yes, it IS fraud. You are deceiving the students and the public and cheating the adjunct.
  
  And to the person who thinks adjuncts are just people who "can't get" full time "gigs" in higher ed: where have you been for the last 50 years as the full-time "gigs" have been evaporating for no better reason than that colleges just don't want to pay for them?
  
  If you all want to persist in rationalizing exploitation, then at least have the courtesy to be honest with the public, whose money you shamelessly take while, apparently, as your comments indicate, you lie to their faces about the quality of the education you provide.

• Posted by sibyl on April 8, 2011 at 11:15am EDT
• In my experience faculty diffidence is not the primary reason, or even a major reason, that a search takes so long. I hasten to point out that Dean Dad's post doesn't clearly say that it is, although it's not hard to see why readers draw that conclusion.
  
  In my experience faculty who have the opportunity to hire in their department are willing to dedicate additional time to the search. They want to get it right. But other reasons work against speed.
  
  *Administrative approvals and bureaucracy aren't problems at my campus but I understand that they can be at some. Even on my campus, if the dean signs off on an ad placement on September 1 the checks may not get cut for another week, and then there's the mail, so ad orders may not arrive until September 10.
  
  *For the sake of justice and for getting the best possible candidate, we advertise in trade publications and disciplinary newsletters as well as online sites. The dead-tree publications are slower and have different publication dates. If five ad orders arrive on September 10, three of them might post the ad online by September 12 or 13, one publication might hit the streets on September 19, and the last on October 8. We can't possibly set a deadline date earlier than November 1, and November 15 or 30 give us more comfort.
  
  *In my discipline we routinely get 300 applications for each job search, each of which includes ten pages of material that must be read (letter, references, vitae) and writing samples that often aren't read. (I lobby my colleagues to cut this down, but haven't succeeded yet. In fairness, if we replaced written references for all candidates with phone calls for semi-finalists, it would probably take as long if not longer.) So each of us has to read at least 600 to 3000 pages of material, and then read and reread more as we narrow the field. That takes time. So does exchanging lists of our favorite candidates and choosing semi-finalists. This is the point at which faculty commit a lot of time, at a point when they have many other commitments (like finals). But they get it done, usually by the end of December.
  
  *Synching schedules is indeed difficult, but everyone is willing to be unusually flexible and give up family duties and other outside commitments that normally aren't flexible. Of course, one reason that synching is difficult is that we take seriously the registrar's mandate to distribute classes during the whole day. Having synched schedules, we then have to have phone interviews, at least 60 minutes in length; we want to have ten semi-finalists, so that's ten of those scarce synched hours, which usually takes two or three weeks. If we have given up winter break, which we usually do, we are in early January; if not, late January.
  
  *Once we have our finalists we have to give them time to arrange visits, usually three weeks or more to get good airfares. Candidate visits take two days and sometimes three, and we don't overlap, so if we have four finalists it will take at least two weeks and maybe three. So campus visits happen in mid-to-late February and early March. After this point, we arrive at a decision within one or two calendar days, and then the dean takes over.
  
  If I thought speed was really important, I'd take the following steps on the front end:
  
  *Have the registrar create a "synch hour" within the department's classes for that year, and have all faculty (including the outside member) commit to being available during it.
  *Advertise online only.
  *Ask candidates to submit letter of application and vita electronically only, and one letter of recommendation either electronically or by snail mail. (The IT office can set up an email address dedicated to the search, e.g. historysearch11@mycollege.edu, and all search committee members can be given the password.)
  *Reduce the list to 50 quarterfinalists, and ask them to send a writing sample and/or additional recommendations, electronically only.
  
  I wouldn't change the phone-and-campus-visit part at all. But the other steps could cut two months out of the process. And inclusiveness and fairness and collegiality would still be preserved.